ESPN ‘seeks free broadcast rights’ to Korean baseball

ESPN’s plans to acquire rights to the Korean Baseball Organisation’s domestic league are reported to have stalled after the US-based sports broadcaster is said to have attempted to acquire the rights free of charge from international rights-holder Eclat.

According to sources speaking to the Yonhap News Agency, numerous issues regarding the broadcast of the games have arisen between Eclat and ESPN. These are said to include who should cover the cost of producing a live feed for an ESPN broadcast to US audiences.

Another problem appears to involve the length of the contract. It is reported that ESPN first offered to air the games on a month-by-month basis, rather than show the whole season. This would give the broadcaster more flexibility for when the time came for MLB to begin its season.

Another source said that ESPN originally said it would pay for the games it aired if sufficient advertising and corporate sponsorship revenue was made.

A KBO official cited by Yonhap said that, while it would be “a positive development” for the games to be aired in the US, “we don’t want our rights-holder to suffer losses just to put games on ESPN. If ESPN thinks Korean baseball isn’t worth any money, then there can’t be any negotiations.”

The slew of media-rights deals agreed for the Korean K League ahead of its recent restart did not generate large revenues for international distributor Sportradar. But the league hopes to capitalise, in the years to come, on the boost to its profile, as one of the first competitions to restart after Covid-19-related shutdowns.

The Korea Baseball Organisation has agreed a domestic media rights deal with the country's three main free-to-air broadcasters worth KRW54bn ($45m) per season for the four seasons from 2020 to 2023, according…

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